Tim Porter says TimesSelect is the Right Thing for the New York Times to Do:
Charging for full access to the newspaper, like the Wall Street Journal does, is one option. Selling subscriptions to pure online journalism products like Salon or TheStreet.com is another. Putting a price on the head of your most popular columnists, like the Time does, is yet another.
That one hit close to home.
I pay $99 for an annual subscription to the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. I pay $39 for an annual subscription to Salon. And I pay $199 to TheStreet.com for its RealMoney service. And I’ve seriously considered paying the New York Times for TimesSelect.
Gee, maybe this online publishing thing could work after all.
Ed Bott 
Perhaps the difference is one of need. There’s little said by NYTimes columnists — except for Paul Krugman — that I want to read. Putting them behind the barrier of TimesSelect removes their writing from search engines, making them even less influential and readable. Finally, all of it is uploaded to usenet groups daily, wrong as that is.
PS: Krugman can usually be paraphrased here along with all the readers’ comments:
Krugman Archives
I think it’s worth it. You not only get certain current content that free readers don’t get, but you also get access to the Times’ archives. It’s not a lot of $ for what you get.
Ed: I get Times Select included with my dead tree subscription to the Sunday Times (which my wife and i enjoy reading over coffee). I’ve found it very useful and would pay for it if (and when) we decide not to continue the read-and-recycle Sunday thing. I have a number of trackers set up that deliver custom feds to me and have a large list of saved articles I use for reference and leisure reading. There’s even a toolbar that works in both Firefox and IE. It’s still an emerging model but I think it does add sufficient value, even at this early stage to be worth considering.